III
She went home because she was unhappy and puzzled and chilled, and had remembered Richard at the wrong time.
She stood alone in the unrelenting electric glare of the foyer, underneath a large portrait of the leading lady, and amid the sheen and sparkle and chattering, gossipy air of release on the groups about her. And over the great general ripple of chatter, at once blurred and distinct, and as ebullient as that of a class deserted by its master, there was a pervasion of bars and refreshments, and cloak-room doors closing and opening. And the sound of the orchestra came through from the auditorium. And near her stood Mr. Gerald Bassett (the famous author) in a thoughtful attitude against the wall, and nearer still stood a large blond American discoursing to his friends. (He had Jus set down An made up his mind [had this American] that he wasn’t going back this time without having met John Gauls Worthy.) And a young woman, of undoubted means, but no talent for dressing herself, came rushing upstairs with another young woman, and brushed past Jackie with “My Dear! I was Hooting!” This young woman meant that, at the time she was alluding to, she had been unable to contain herself with laughter. Jackie did not know whether this was at the play, and she did not really care. But she resented this young woman brushing away her legacy with a missish Hoot, and criticized her dress roughly in her mind. Then she began to listen to the various remarks around her….
“Oh, but, my dear, I am responsible. I brought you here….”
“… not wisely, I’m afraid, but too well….”
“I say, Ronald, old boy, is that man I just met a Famous Surgeon?” “Famous Surgeon, old boy — what’s the matter? …”
“No — but as a first act pure and simple, I mean….”
“Ah, but, my dear, I’m getting a violent Higher Thought complex myself these days!”
“… Famous Surgeons on the brain….”
“Oh, but you must be careful now we’ve got a novelist in the family! …”
“That’s nothing, my dear. I go to Palmists!”
“… though only in strictly heavy parts.”
“My dear! CRYSTAL-gazers!”
“… and when sober, the most enchanting creature imaginable.”
And as Jackie stood there, in the crush, wondering what it was all about, and what Richard would have thought of it all, and whether they were liking this very second-rate play — a tune she was very fond of, all at once, came through from the auditorium….
And it caused her suddenly to recall, in a sad mist, the very great beauty of their little time together. And it struck her that her spirit had been alive and poignant then, and that it was dead and beautiless now, and that this ornate chattering and idle gossiping around her, this foolish orchestra and foolish play, this tawdry, stuffy, smoke-ridden foyer — were irrelevant and very paltry phenomena to one whose spirit had once been alive.
And then the young lady who had Hooted returned with her friend. “A Succession of Violent Snorts, my dear!” said this young lady, as she passed.
Jackie went straight upstairs, made her apologies to her friends — who had not been Hunting Madly about the Place for her (as they said they had), but who were extremely concerned and puzzled by her decision to leave — and came down and left the theatre just as the first lines of the second act were reverberating hollowly upon a newly awed, breathless, shirt-creaking, slightly coughing, and romantically darkened house.
She refused a taxi, and walked in her evening cloak to Charing Cross. It was a curious thing to have done: but she was without feeling.
In fact, she had entirely lost interest in the matter by the time she had reached the station, and on seeing a newspaper placard:
“39 IN BURNING BUILDING”
she bought one to see whether they had got out.
She looked at it in the train. They had.
CHAPTER VI
OBSERVATIONS
I
JACKIE had many other opportunities for eavesdropping in the next few weeks’ run of “World’s End,” the publicity for which was being capably handled, and which, with a mixed Press, was doing fairly well.
It was the gallery crowd with which she at last became intrigued the most. She had never taken much interest in this part of the theatre before, having conceived of it as little else than a vaguely seething locality to which (as a slight concession and an evidence of your competence) you Spoke Up, so that every line could be heard at the back. But now she came into closer touch with her gallery.
It began with an enormous feeling of gratitude, on her part, towards those submissive little queue-lengths she would observe, as early as half-past six, forming and coagulating (like odd attracted atoms blown from the swirl of a homegoing metropolis) outside the back doors of the Empress Theatre. She could never get over her sense of imposture and feeling of pity at this sight. She did not know what it was, but there was something so abject, so ingenuous, so altogether friendly and dependent in this spectacle, judged externally, that she quite experienced shame on their behalf. “Really, you poor, dumb things,” she wanted to say. “I need you indeed, if I’m ever to get my money back, but I would never have considered you like that. Why don’t you go to a nice show (preferably a musical one) and enjoy yourselves? Who on earth told you you could get your money’s worth here?” Such was Jackie’s first attitude towards her galleries.
It was not until one Saturday afternoon, when, out of the spirit of curiosity and the desire to learn more of her profession, she herself queued up and planked down her hurried one-and-twopence for an Olympian view of “World’s End,” that she changed her opinion. It was then borne in upon her that she was not amongst dumb cattle, but amongst Disinterested Theatre Lovers.
Jackie had heard a great deal about Distinterested Theatre Lovers, but now that she found herself face to face with the type she did not think that it was a very enjoyable thing to be. Nor yet a very valuable thing. Indeed, if the theatre (as an art) was to be judged by the standard of its most Disinterested patronage (and by what more valid criterion could it be judged?), she did not think the theatre would come out very well from the ordeal.
In fact, from the long queues of pasty-faced and overworked typists, dowdy and genteel young women from obscure Universities, genteel and toothless ancients from Bayswater boarding-houses, suburban harridans with canvas stools, spotty-faced young men peering at bent-back books, out-of-work actors and medical students — all lined up stodgily between the wall and the gesticulatory histrionic parasitism of the down-at-heel but impudent queue-performer — Jackie derived the most depressing sensations. It was not that she reacted so much against the almost plodding beautiless-ness of these patrons themselves (though she did do this): it was that the whole scene was antipathetic to her own concept of art. For Jackie’s concept of art was that of a thing bringing light-heartedness, and beauty, and joy into the hearts of its devotees, and there was very little evidence of that here. On the contrary, there was a certain grimness and aggressiveness here, which made itself felt from the moment the door clicked hysterically open, and that unpleasant, wolf-like rush up the hollow-clanging stairs (lit garishly by smudged, barred windows) commenced. If art was joy — a not very promising approach to the temple of joy!
And when upstairs, on a dizzy level with the ceiling, and in the wretched dimness cast by the blazing spanglements of the chandelier, and amid the brusquerie of medalled war-veterans, and the casual manners of unresponsive programme-girls — the atmosphere was even more chilling. Also an extraordinary touchiness developed in the crowd as the place filled up (which it did very rapidly).
There grew up, in fact, a constrained atmosphere of “This is Engaged, I’m afraid” — or, “Is this Engaged, please?” and, on a cool affirmative, an abrupt and rather unpleasant “Oh”— or, “If you’ll move along a little to the right, we’ll all be happier, won’t we?” To say nothing of various muttered but indubitably testy “Of course, Why People want to Wear Such Hats ——” and occasional pure outbreaks of “
Other People want to See as well as you, you know!” and appeals to the veterans.
Such was theatre love. And then, as the lights plunged down, and the curtain swished up, and a hush fell, and a late arrival went Stamp-Stamp (or even Plonk-Plank) on the wooden floor as he tried to blunder into a seat, Shshshshshsh! hissed the gallery, and Shshshshshsh! (more angrily), and SHSHSHSHSHSH! And leant over, with glistening eyes, as the marvels of “World’s End” were unfolded beneath it.
Jackie developed an aloof and doubtful attitude towards theatre love.
II
But then matinées always had this kind of effect upon Jackie. That ineffectual assumption of darkness and electriclit revelry at three hours after noon in a theatre surrounded by a swirling, heavy-labouring and over-lunched London, stole the last shreds of enchantment from her calling. She could see the drama as a whole, and without emotion, at such times, and she was slightly appalled.
III
Jackie, you see, was crying for faith…. She was for ever, nowadays, examining and appraising the eminences to which she still aspired.
If she was going to be a successful actress, if she was to be given, that is, a medium of self-expression — she wanted to know what awaited her.
Concerning that medium itself she had her doubts. Her medium would be a slightly uncanny, elongated, three-walled, glue-smelling, bright lemon-coloured interior world (a form of symbolism, to begin with, from which the imaginative mind recoiled); and in this world she would walk about with a feeling of peculiar mental undress, knowing that every one of her movements and utterances was espied, embarrassed, and generally eaten up by the spiritual magnetism of a fourth and non-existent wall — to which wall all the settees were obviously sprawled (like sun-rays), all the silent and dreadful speeches were made, and all existence was subtly but inescapably referred. (Those sinister glassy eyes of actors and actresses on a first night!)
But although this wall played so large a part, it did not really exist. You could not even look at a picture on this wall (and Jackie had tried this) without getting a laugh….
And when there were a lot of people present at the same time in this world, the person speaking spoke three times louder than he would have ordinarily, and all the other people either remained queerly silent and attentive, or spoke amongst themselves three times more quietly than they would have spoken ordinarily, and stood extraordinarily close to each other, like conspirators…. With discrepancies and eccentricities of this nature this world was filled, and it was, on the whole, a grouped and arranged world as little resembling actual life as Frith’s selected picture resembles Derby Day.
Such, normally, would be her vehicle, and she did not complain. It was undoubtedly the business of the actress to subdue these disadvantages to her own purpose. She now came to the use to which she was to put that vehicle.
*
Now Jackie was quite clear on this point — as far as she herself was concerned. She desired simply to convey to others as much as possible of her own personal observations and spiritual experiences in this world. Not only did she wish to indicate, in a lighter vein, some of the inconsistencies and piquancies and unadjustable ironies besetting herself and her fellow-creatures in their thwarted social endeavour; she also thought that she could, if given the opportunity, touch upon some of the higher and more mysterious and beautiful intimations she had had from time to time. She had had exalted moments, she knew — she had had her day in the rain on the Sussex downs, and she knew a great deal about many lovely things….
Moreover, she was convinced that these things had said something uniquely to herself, and that she very keenly desired to express that something to others, and that she would be able — she did not quite know how, but somehow or other with her gestures or her voice (which had great scope and flexibility at times) — to summon, and perhaps half mystically to suggest these appeals….
And that was all there was to it. She was (she now understood) neither a very clever nor exceptionally sensitive being: but she had the straightforward desire to express and unburden herself in these respects.
*
She found, however, that so far from being permitted to express her own self in this vehicle she had chosen, she was to be called upon to interpret the mostly obscure and always half-heartedly conveyed ideas of another. And more than that, these ideas, before coming under her control, had not only to pass filtrated through the whims and urgencies of the mime-master himself, but to be embarrassed and effected by the exigencies of her fellow-performers.
Actually she had heard in the theatre, abroad and unashamed, talk of gallantries and selfishnesses with Sympathy. If she was to be a true artist she knew that she could not possibly recognize such a word, and what freaks of characterization and falsities of sentiment, what ludicrous games of emotional Snap-dragon, were in progress around her, she did not dare contemplate.
And over and above this, there was the actual quality of the ideas which, after infinite waylayings, she would in general have the opportunity of interpreting. And taken all in all, from her present experience and general observations, she did not think that they were likely to prove either very noble, clear, or shrewd ideas. Indeed the world of the average play was a world she did not know. For although it was beyond measure preoccupied by the topic of love (and what more vital, imposing, and absorbing topic could there be?) — for one who had had her day on the Sussex downs in the rain, and observed what she had observed then, its treatment of this subject was too irrelevant and silly altogether.
But then it was an irrelevant world. It was a world in which purity consisted either of abstention from contacts which Jackie (and her actor and actress friends) believed to be perfectly decent and human contacts — or else of a sentimental idealization of a still rather reprobate escape from that abstention. It was a world in which Comedy was either the pat utterance of humorous quips, or a series of creaking Situations in which somebody discovered somebody else doing something he shouldn’t, and watched him trying ineffectually to hide it up. And it was a world in which Tragedy was unalterably confused with self-sacrifice.
IV
But even with all this she would be content. Again she told herself that a great actress (and though she had never yet observed one in action, she was convinced that there must be some such thing) could defeat and weld these conflicting factors to her own purpose.
And if there was also such a thing as a great drama, then the fault lay with herself and not with her profession.
But, taking into account these conflicting factors, she was overwhelmed by the enormous arduousness of the task facing her fellow-professionals….
Whereat she was immediately appalled by the frivolousness with which these demands were habitually met.
Indeed actors and actresses (from what she knew of the greater part of them), so far from spending their entire undisturbed mornings closeted in rooms for the purpose of practising inflexion, tone, rhythm, modulation and gesture, till they were sick of their own voices and themselves — so far from observing, note-taking, and harassing their producer or author to the breaking-point — so far from debating every doubtful point amongst themselves until a working agreement was reached (and she had heard famous producers being derided for entering into the entire past history, place of birth and upbringing, illnesses and unique vices of the character to be portrayed) — so far from this, they were up to all sorts of daily occupations of which the Rockingham Hard Court Tennis Club was but one shining example.
The obvious stumbling-blocks and difficulties of this art (if it was to be an art) being so much greater than those of any other, a supremer effort (she felt) was called for. She was therefore disturbed to observe that in this, of all arts, the least effort was being made.
She found, in fact, that those who had set out to hold the mirror to life and manners, were not merely as subjectively involved by that life, and those manners, as the rest of human kind, but, in a curious way, a great deal more so….
> V
This was a distressing conclusion, which she took some time in reaching. She commenced to observe it shortly after her acquaintanceship with the Rockingham Hard Court Tennis Club, and her first inkling of it arose, possibly, through Crashes in the War….
Now in her social contacts, both apart from and in the theatre, Jackie had naturally encountered several individuals who had had Crashes in the War. They were quite easy things to have had. But, however accessible, they did, she found, confer a certain obvious distinction (even in her own mind) upon their victims — and particularly if they were Crashes…. To have been severely wounded would not have been quite the same thing (though she personally would rather have put it like that)…. There was something expansive and livid about a Crash….
Now it is strange that these accidents (and talk of these accidents) should have led Jackie to the unique conclusion she at last formed concerning the temperament of actors and actresses, but there it was. For she found that, however much the world in general might indulge in Crashes in the War, the theatrical world was indulging in them a little bit more, and a little more heavily….
It was the most subtle thing on earth. It was not even as though these casualties were mentioned more often or more solemnly in theatrical circles than in others: it simply was that, in an ineffable way, they lay more heavily and more self-consciously upon those who had suffered from them….
It was almost (almost — not quite) as though actors were endeavouring to imply that they could have Crashes in the War as well as anybody else…. It was almost as though you had made some accusation….
Now when once Jackie had alighted upon this discovery with respect to Crashes, she commenced to apply the same line of thought to various other manifestations of the same kind of thing…. All this was far from being confined to Crashes. It was, rather, in the literary, lingual, scholastic, and most particularly social spheres that she identified the same atmosphere again. And in these other instances it was the perpetually recurring introduction of the two words “Of Course” which principally attracted her attention.
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